You can feel the pulse of the universal body

So our program is to worship the original Supreme Personality of Godhead, Govinda. This is Krsna consciousness movement, find out who is the original person. Naturally, everyone is anxious to find out the original person of a family, original person of a society, original person of a nation, original person of humanity… You go on, searching. But if you can find out the original person from whom everything has come out, that is Brahman. Janmady asya yatah [Bhag. 1.1.1]. The Vedanta-sutra says Brahman, the Absolute Truth, is that from whom everything has emanated. Very simple description. What is God, what is the Absolute Truth, very simple definition—the original person.

So this Krsna consciousness movement means to approach the original person. The original person is not dead, because everything emanates from the original person, so everything is working very nicely. The sun is rising, the moon is rising, the seasons are changing, so…, there is night, there is day, just in the order. So the function of the body of the original person is going on nicely. How you can say that God is dead? Just like in your body, when the physician finds by feeling your pulse that the heart beating is going on nicely, he does not declare that “This man is dead.” He says, “Yes, he is alive.” Similarly, if you are intelligent enough, you can feel the pulse of the universal body—and it is going on nicely. So how you can say God is dead? God is never dead. It is rascal’s version that God is dead—unintelligent persons, persons who have no sense how to feel something dead or alive. One who has got the sense to feel how a thing is dead or alive, to understand, he’ll never say God is dead. Therefore in the Bhagavad-gita it is stated that janma karma me divyam yo janati tattvatah: “Any intelligent person who can simply understand how I take my birth and how I work,” janma karma… Now, mark this word janma, birth; and karma, work. He never says janma mrtyu. Mrtyu means death. Everything that is born, that has death also. Anything. We haven’t got any experience which is born does not die. This body is born; therefore it will die. The death is born with the birth of my body. I am increasing my age, number of years of my age, means I’m dying. But in this verse of Bhagavad-gita Krsna says janma karma but never says “My death.” Death cannot take place. God is eternal. You also do not die. That I do not know. I simply change my body. So this is to be understood. Krsna consciousness science is a great science. It is stated…it is not a new thing. It is stated in the Bhagavad-gita… Most of you, you are well acquainted with Bhagavad-gita. In the Bhagavad-gita, it does not accept that after the death of this body—not exactly death—after the annihilation, appearance or disappearance of this body, you or I do not die. Na hanyate. Na hanyate means “never dies” or “is never destroyed,” even after the destruction of this body. This is the position.

Lecture
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Seattle, October 2, 1968